We've only lived at our house for 11 months and have a HUGE black walnut tree. I've decided that if the squirrels think they are so great, I'll give the them (walnuts not the squirrels ) a try. I've heard gloves are a must. What's the best way to open them? Running them over with a car? Hammer? Vice? Freezing them for 72 hours?
I gave up trying. We have several black walnut trees and I consider them to be a big pain in the behind. We have to rake them all up before we can mow the east side of our yard.
I hang them in a potato sack to dry out behind the tool shed. Then the husks pretty much fall off after a while. Do wear gloves, they can stain your skin and clothes something awful! Once you get the squirrels nice and fattened up this winter, you should give them a try, too!
Thanks - gritsar - I really believe I'll give up trying too. As for the squirrels, I'll leave it to the neighborhood cats/dogs/foxes/hawks. Those little buggers aren't afraid of anything. As long as everyone eats the squirrels and not the chickens I'll be happy.
Quote:I think the &!@#! squirrels got most of them already, but if I have extra you can have them for the price of postage. I'll let you know.
Wear gloves for sure. What we do is roll them with shoes, then put the shells into a mesh bag to dry for a couple of weeks. Hang them in a dry place. Then your nuts are ready to shuck into nuts.
When I was a kid we had black walnut trees in the yard. My mom hated them because the squirrels would throw the pieces of husk down from the trees and they would hit the clean laundry on the clothesline and make little orange dots all over everything. But regarding husking and shelling them, my dad would put chains on one tire of the car, jack it up high enough to get a wooden crate full of walnuts under that tire and then back down so the tire was in the box (but not all the way down to the ground, of course) and then run the car so that the tire would shuck and shell the nuts. Don't know if you could do that with cars today, seemed like he used the wheel that they called the "drive wheel" .
The drive wheel is what ever set of wheels "drive" the car. So for some cars, the drive wheels are the front, while in others it is in the rear... then there are even the ones where all four "drive" the car. How did he make sure that they all got shelled and some didn't end up mush though?
Dh and FIL put them in an old concrete mixer to remove the hulls and rinse them in there as well. They are very happy with the results.
